Now and Forever (7 page)

Emilie leaned out of the basket and landed a punch on Zane's shoulder. "Why did you say something so stupid?"

"I didn't think you'd like it if I told him we were lovers."

"Why didn't you tell him the truth?"

"I told him the truth," he said with maddening male logic. "We were engaged...once."

"Now the whole town will be buzzing about it by the time we land."

"That we're engaged or that we're lovers?"

He was enjoying this altogether too much for her taste. "That I'm a total idiot."

"A touch of scandal never hurt anyone."

"You don't know Crosse Harbor."

"I don't need to know Crosse Harbor. Come with me tonight, Emilie." His smile was piratical, seductive. "We'll explore Tahiti. I'll show you moonlight in Cairo and sunrise in Spain. We can breakfast in Paris and dine in Hawaii and make love in every city, port, and country in between before you say goodbye."

Her heart thundered inside her chest as a fierce longing sprang to life. When she was old and grey and sitting on her front porch counting down the days, she'd have something to warm her soul besides an afghan and a pot of tea. The notion of walking away from reality and into Zane's dream was extremely compelling.

"Absolutely not," she said over the insistent noise of the pilot burner.

"Last chance," he said, eyes narrowing.

"Forget it," she said. "I'm not going anywhere with you."

"Then I'll come with you."

She froze in place, motionless with shock as he pulled up the two stakes anchoring the balloon to the ground then leaped into the gondola as it started to rise.

"Hey!" Dan Walsh was running back from the parking lot, Emilie's skirt waving behind him like a muslin banner. "You come back here!"

"Do something!" Emilie shrieked. "Grab the ropes, Dan! Stop this thing!"

"Relax," said Zane adjusting the flow of gas. "I'll get you to your celebration in one piece."

"Are you
crazy
?" she screamed over the roar of the propane tank that was propelling the balloon upward into the sky. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Taking you for a ride."

"You
are
crazy!" She backed away toward the edge of the basket. "Do you even know how to fly this thing?"

"We'll find out soon enough." He jimmied with the control on the propane tank. "I've flown in hot-air balloons before."

"And I've flown in a 747. That doesn't mean I think I could pilot one."

"That's the difference between us. I'm willing to give it a try." And the problem was he usually succeeded.

The flame shot upward while Emilie entertained visions of tangled power lines, and giant birds with very sharp beaks. The crimson-colored silk balloon carried them higher and higher, leaving the safety of earth far below.

"I hope they arrest you for this," she said, struggling with a combination of fear and elation. He'd always been one for grand gestures and, fool that she was, she always been a sucker for them.

"Would you press charges?"

"In a heartbeat. How dare you risk my life because you feel like pulling some crazy stunt!"

"Playing it safe has killed more people than craziness ever could."

"You think you can move mountains, don't you?"

Again that pirate's grin. "If there was something I wanted on the other side, I'd give it a try."

His meaning was unmistakable. She closed her eyes for a second against a flood of longing that went beyond sex to a place she'd thought existed only in her dreams. "I wish you hadn't done this," she whispered. "There's no point to it. Last night was last night. We both know there can't be a future for us." Why couldn't he have the soul of a poet besides the face of a god? "I want more from a man than great sex. I want a man I can love."

"You loved me once."

She sighed. "I thought I did."

"You did," he said, a note of steel in his voice. "Just because it didn't last doesn't mean it wasn't real."

She shook her head and looked out at the panorama drifting by below them. If that had been enough they would still be married. "You never did understand me."

"Are you sure
you
do?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Last night I got the feeling you're not as connected to this little town of yours as you'd like me to believe."

"I wish you wouldn't say things like that." She suppressed a shiver. He'd come too close to exposing her own fears. "Crosse Harbor is my home...my family helped build this town after the War was over."

"We're a lot alike," he said over her objections. "We're both looking for something we may never find." He stepped closer. "Did you ever think maybe we've already found it?"

"I'm not looking for anything." How false her words sounded. How empty. "I like my life the way it is."

"Like hell. Admit it, Em. You're an adventurer, Emilie. You want more than this little shore town can give you." His words, taunting and too close to home, broke the last of her control. She lurched across the swaying gondola toward him. He grabbed her by the wrist then pinned her arm behind her, a wicked glint of amusement in his eye. She tried to pull away but each time she did, the gondola swayed alarmingly, sending her stomach into a roller-coaster dive.

"You got away with it once," he said, his tone holding a hint of steel. "I wouldn't push my luck."

Dangerous or not, she went to kick him in the shins but he pulled her up against his body and held her fast.

"Take a look, Em," he warned. "It's a long way back to earth."

She peered over the edge of the basket and gasped. They were sailing up over the morning fog, over the treetops, and into the clouds.

His grip eased at the look of wonderment she knew was on her face. "Impressive, isn't it?"

She nodded, unable to pull her gaze away from the panorama beneath her. "There's the main road into town," she said, pointing to a dark ribbon winding its way through the lush green countryside. "I never thought of it as beautiful before."

"Perspective is everything."

"I have to hand it to you," she said. "You always did know how to make the morning-after as memorable as the night before. I wish--" She stopped. "My God, it's freezing." She wrapped her arms across her chest against the sudden drop in temperature. The sensation of movement had ceased. She felt as if the balloon was suspended in an icy, silver-grey cocoon. "Is this normal? It
is
normal, isn't it?"

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the balloon and gondola dropped like an elevator shimmying between floors.

"It's okay," Zane said, raising the pilot flame to combat the sudden descent of the balloon. "Don't worry. Nothing's going to happen to us."

"There's something wrong, isn't there?"

"Those clouds." He pointed to the east. "A second ago it had been dead clear. They blew in out of nowhere."

She started toward him as he worked with the sputtering tank of propane. The balloon shook like a platter of Jell-o then dropped again.

"There's nothing to worry about," he said. "If I can just stabilize her, we can regain altitude once we clear this cloud cover."

He sounded so sure, so confident. One of the chosen few who could face down a tornado and live to tell about it. She wanted to believe him but wicked crosswinds rocked the gondola and she was thrown against him as they plunged even deeper into the icy grey clouds.

He pushed her toward the floor. "Lie down in the middle," he barked. "You'll be safer there. I don't like--" His words were lost in the vicious gust of wind that roared in from the west.

The gondola tilted to the left like an amusement park ride gone crazy, followed by the horrifying sound of the silk balloon ripping apart.

"Hold on to me, Em!" he shouted, as tatters of bright red silk drifted down from the sky. "We're going down!"

Chapter Three

Emilie was alive--or at least she thought she was—but it was hard to tell..

If she was dead she was pretty sure she wouldn't hurt like someone had dragged her across five miles of bad road.

Her eyelids stung. Her shoulders ached. Knees, hands, face...every single part of her body, including the appendix she'd lost when she was three years old.

Champagne
,
she thought groggily. She had a vague recollection of a bottle of Cristal and--

And then what?

There must have been a good reason for polishing off a bottle of fancy French champagne but for the life of her she couldn't imagine what it was. If she'd had any idea what torture lay ahead of her, she would have reached for the diet soda instead.

She tried to pry open her eyelids but the sunlight was so intense that she just groaned and buried her face in the sand.

Wait just a minute. Sand? Spreading her fingers wide, she felt the area around her. Small pebbles, sharp pieces of shell, silky grains of beach sand--

She pulled herself upright and opened her eyes. The sky overhead was an amazing, picture-postcard shade of blue, streaked with one or two snowy-white clouds. She found herself wishing she had a pair of sunglasses with her to shield her eyes from the glare bouncing up off the sand.

Gingerly she touched her face, her shoulders, wiggled her arms and legs. Nothing was broken, thank God. Her knees and hands were badly scraped, stinging each time the salt water lapped against the shore. She supposed she should be greatly relieved to be in such good shape, but she'd be even more relieved if she only knew how it was she'd come to be there on the beach.

With a groan she rose to her feet and looked about in an attempt to regain her bearings. The lighthouse rose from a rugged outcropping of rocks not thirty feet away from where she stood. She shuddered as she looked at the jagged boulders with the sharp edges and imagined what might have happened. Many a man had met his Maker along the shores of Eagle Island, the tiny spit of land across the harbor from her house.

"Think, Emilie," she said out loud, searching for a clue. "It's morning. You're near the lighthouse." She glanced down at her bizarre attire: an 18th century bodice worn with black leggings and ballet flats. She was all in favor of mix-and-match but usually tried to limit her choices to the same century.

A costume party, maybe?

If only she could think straight. Her brain felt as if it were filled with those Styrofoam peanuts that come tumbling out of packing boxes when you open the lid. Not even the worst case of jet lag had made her feel so goofy and disoriented. She squinted down at her watch. The crystal was cracked but the second hand was still ticking. Nine a.m. on July 25th.

Suddenly the images came at her in a dizzying blur. The sleek black foreign car with the lion's roar of an engine.

The uniform from a distant time.

A man with eyes the color of the deepest sapphire blue who'd protected her with his own body as the earth rushed up toward them and--

Zane!

She swayed on her feet, as her center of gravity realigned itself. A mounting sense of panic gripped her by the chest, making it hard to breathe. Where was the gondola? The crimson silk of the balloon itself? Even the beach looked oddly different, as if all signs of life had been airbrushed away. No soda cans tossed into the dune grass. No bottles bobbing up and down at the water's edge. Not even a McDonald's wrapper or a Burger King bag, two of the most ubiquitous signs of human life.

And, worst of all, no sign of her ex-husband.

"Okay," she said out loud. "There has to be an answer to all of this." The sound of her own voice steadied her. "Just use your head, Emilie. You can figure it out."

Maybe it wasn't so confusing after all.

They'd drifted into some pretty weird cloud formations. She wasn't an expert in aeronautics, but everyone had heard stories about wind shear and cross-currents and weird thermal down drafts that had vexed better pilots than Zane Grey Rutledge.

She remembered the stomach-churning sensation of vertigo as the gondola tumbled end-over-end after the balloon itself collapsed. She'd probably tumbled from the basket as they drifted past the beach, while Zane continued to struggle with the gas tank and the sputtering flame.